Certain food items are considered the province of specialty restaurants. There are many examples of such food items but the one that will be considered for explanation of the present invention is pizza. Pizza is often thought of in the context of small community restaurants wherein the pizza of that restaurant has a distinguishing characteristic that sets it apart from other pizza restaurants. It is desirable to maintain this kind of individualism even for restaurant chains. Of course, the food product should be consistent as among the restaurants of the chain but each restaurant should convey the impression that its pizza is specially produced.
To insure consistency among the restaurants, they will have similar menus, the ingredients will be provided from a common source, and preparation of the food item will follow a prescribed cooking formula. Nevertheless, each restaurant can be provided with a community-like atmosphere. This leaves the food item itself. The pizza should not look like it has been made by a machine with everything having a symmetrical appearance.
Pizzas are identified primarily by their toppings. A common topping is sausage. A hand made sausage pizza will have chunks of sausage spread over the top of the pizza. Perfectly formed cubes of sausage or perfectly formed configurations of any kind give the appearance of automation and is to be avoided. Yet consistency of food product dictates that so many chunks of a certain size chunk are to be used for that pizza. Thus, the chunks are pre-made at a central source. They can readily be produced of equal size but to provide the desired appearance of dissimilarity is not so easily achieved.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a machine that will cut a food product, e.g., sausage rolls or loaves, into equally sized chunks that are dissimilar and thus maintain the desired custom look of home style cooking.